Court Ruling To See The Pirate Bay Domains Suspended

Things are never quite as simple as they may seem when it comes to The Pirate Bay. Its history is long and storied, but the most recent entries into that history are still being written, with one particular court case surrounding the site having just come to an end. For now.

Way back in 2013, anti-piracy prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion aimed at taking down two of The Pirate Bay’s most popular domain names. Those names, ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se, have been the centre of attention ever since.

This is where things start to get interesting, though, because rather than going after The Pirate Bay directly, Ingblad instead turned his attention toPunkt SE (IIS), the people responsible for Sweden’s top-level .SE domain.

As both domains were used for the infringement of copyright, the prosecutor claimed that not only should they be suspended, but that IIS should also be held liable for the infringement itself. Predictably enough, though, nobody else agreed, including the Stockholm District Court.

Having had the initial case dismissed, Ingblad and co. appealed, and that appeal has just ended. As you might expect, the domains themselves are now going to be suspended as originally wished, but the good news for IIS is that the ruling in response to the appeal, delivered at the Svea Court of Appeal, has again declared that the domain organization cannot be held liable for what was done under the name of the two The Pirate Bay domain names.

Things aren’t quite over just yet, though. Prosecutors are now going to go after The Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij, who is deemed to be the owner of the domain names, and although he claims that he is not, things look likely to rumble on for some time. Neij says that he is no longer involved in The Pirate Bay, but that might not be enough to stop him from being embroiled in yet more carnage surrounding the site.